Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Emily Klovitz. Emily, how are you?
Emily Klovitz: [0:12] I’m doing great. How are you?
Henrik: [0:13] Great. Emily, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [0:18] I’m involved in Digital Asset Management as both student and practitioner. I’m finishing my MLIS at the University of Oklahoma, and also working full time in the field. I currently am a digital asset manager for JCPenney at the home office. I’ve also worked on digital projects outside of a formal DAM environment, in archives and also a museum.
[0:48] Recently, I have become very involved in the DAM education and DAM community. Part of that is a desire to contribute to the field. Another part of that is just me segueing into the next phase of my life.
Henrik: [1:05] Emily, how does the national retail chain use Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [1:10] My company uses Digital Asset Management for a variety of reasons ‑‑ works in progress, distribution, and also brand management. In my specific area, we use Digital Asset Management for works in progress, and also on final, finished photography for marketing assets. The DAM is fairly new, only a couple of years old, and it’s really only been hard‑launched since last November [2013].
[1:39] There’s a lot of building going on right now. Basically, it’s such a large organization, there’re actually multiple DAM environments. We are positioning ours as the enterprise DAM, but we still have a long road ahead of us. In terms of other DAM systems, there are that some that makes sense, in terms of what kind of content is kept and described, and also the perks of that specific system.
[2:07] Then, the different challenges of the type of content we’re talking about. As time has passed, the various DAM managers have crossed paths, and it’s been very rewarding to speak to these people, and find out what we have in common, and where we can help each other out.
[2:25] There have also been systems that didn’t really provide value for the organization and were duplications of content. I worked very hard to get rid of those systems. They’ve been shut down, and that’s because we have been lucky to have very strong senior leadership and buy‑in behind our DAM.
[2:43] What’s really interesting about my organization, or any large organization trying to wrangle their content, is just the sheer number of assets you’re actually talking about. Also, the number of DAM systems actually used by the organization, because many times it’s often multiple DAM systems.
Henrik: [3:02] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [3:05] The biggest challenge to Digital Asset Management is change management. Everything else is a problem that can be solved logically. People are more tricky than that.
[3:16] The second biggest challenge is probably that DAM does not happen in a vacuum. There are more than likely other digital initiatives in your organization, and sometimes being able to see a bigger picture, even bigger than Digital Asset Management, can help an organization implement control over information chaos. This means information governance should be part of the Digital Asset Management strategy, or perhaps the DAM strategy is a facet of an overall digital strategy or information management strategy.
[3:53] It’s been very difficult for me to stay in my DAM bubble, so to speak, in the corporate world. As an information specialist, it is so glaringly obvious all the areas that could benefit from information governance. Yet there’s only one of you, and a DAM manager has many hats to wear. That’s what I feel are the biggest challenges to Digital Asset Management.
[4:20] Successes? I guess getting buy‑in feels really good. Growing your user adoption, that’s very rewarding. Any time you have even a slight increase in user adoption, that’s a big success, and you should take the time to celebrate it. Speaking of that, with your successes in Digital Asset Management, it’s OK to brag a little. It’s part of the advocating for your DAM, so usage reports and celebrating that kind of thing is good for DAM managers to do.
Henrik: [4:57] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Emily: [5:03] Read everything you can get your hands on and don’t get married to a system. There are many sources for education pertaining to Digital Asset Management. Many of them are community‑, vendor‑ or organization‑based, not necessarily subjected to the rigor of scholarly publication and peer review, which we talked about previously.
[5:26] It’s important to be skeptical, I think. Verify the facts for yourself. Inspect methodologies, and don’t get sucked into buying something because of someone putting the weight of authority behind it. I also think that you should trust your gut, because you can usually tell when information is info‑fluff, versus substantial information that adds to your understanding.
[5:54] The part about the DAM system, we’re usually the ones enacting the change and we’re not the ones who have to deal with it, because we’re starting the change. But you have to be cognizant of this may not be the best solution long term, and you can’t marry a system. It’s not about the technology. Digital Asset Management is so much more than that. You need to constantly be benchmarking your DAM, inspecting your practices, and getting better and better so you can grow as a digital asset manager.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Dan Piro.
[0:08] Dan, how are you?
Dan Piro: [0:09] I’m good, how are you?
Henrik: [0:10] Great. Dan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [0:13] I work for Turner Broadcasting. I am the Digital Asset Manager for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies, on‑air, creative services department.
Henrik: [0:23] Dan, how does a broadcast company use Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [0:29] When a company as big as ours, we’re talking about 10 national cable networks, implemented Digital Asset Management tool, you’re really dealing with an unfathomable amount of media that’s coming in and out. DAM is really the heart of our ability to get to that media.
[0:49] We use this system to manage all the media that’s coming in, it’s going out. We’re sharing it between each other throughout the workday. We have one enterprise system that everybody in the company uses, but we all have our own instances.
[1:04] In my case, I actually manage three different instances, one for each network. My role supports these different networks based on their different business needs. We setup each one uniquely for those networks.
[1:18] For example, TNT. They deal with mostly seasonal programming. You’ll have episodic shows, they have 10, 12 episode runs. They run 10 weeks in a row. Done. That show is going to go away for six months or a year until it comes back.
[1:33] Part of what we do is use our Digital Asset Management tools to, once that season’s over, push all that content offline. Bring it back online when we’re getting ready to lauch the next season. It really increases efficiencies across the board.
[1:48] Shortly before I started there and was in the interview process, I think we had about 10 original shows on TNT. Just in about two years it’s grown to about 25. We’re dealing with different kind of shows now too. Now we’re doing unscripted shows and a lot of big blockbuster shows.
[2:07] We had ‘The Last Ship,’ with Michael Bay. There’s all these big‑time people that are coming in to put stuff on our network which is great. At the same time, for my role, it’s like “OK, so we’re going to have 60 terabytes of footage from that show, and 40 from that show. Where’s all these stuff going to go?”
[2:25] That’s really where I come in. Making sure that all these raw materials have a place to go when they come in. Have a place to go when we’re done with them. Creating retention policies to determine how long certain things need to be around. Things we don’t need to keep forever. Some stuff we do need to keep forever.
[2:41] We have to make a long term storage solution for certain media that has to be around forever, that we’re always going to go back to.
[2:49] In terms of how we use it? We use it to create a central repository of massive amounts of media files. The benefits of it are that it creates wide access, where several people can use the same media at the same time. You can search for it, you can retrieve it. You have instant accessibility. You can view proxies of files that are not online.
[3:18] Years ago, you’d have to go pull a tape off a shelf, pop it in, fast forward to the part you are looking for, “Oh! That’s not what I need,” pop it out, put it back on the shelf, get the next one. Now, you are just looking at a screen. You’re never leaving your desk. Everything is right there in front of you.
[3:33] Metadata is absolutely key to finding anything. If you put something in your deep storage without applying metadata, you’re never going to find it again. Whether it be as basic as possible, it’s from this show, it’s from this season and it’s this type of asset. Be it shoot footage, a daily, an episode.
[3:52] Even that light level of metadata is good. When you have the option to go in and really tag it with key words and whatnot, it becomes more useful. At this point, the system is still new and we’re still growing, and I think we’re going to get to more of that in the future.
[4:10] In the very early stages, we’re more worried about making sure our new stuff is getting into this system. Then grow the abilities of it once everybody’s onboard and comfortable with it.
[4:22] I think the final aspect of it would be that there’s a safe and secure storage method where nobody’s taking a tape home, it’s disappearing in the background, they accidentally recorded over it. Everything is in one place and people have access to it, but it’s not going away. I would say those are some of the most important ways of how we use Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [4:45] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [4:49] The biggest challenge has to be putting in a new system and getting people to change their habits. It’s hard to convince people that there’s a better way than what they are already doing that works.
[4:59] The important thing as a media manager is to understand your business, how it works, and the role that DAM plays in it. It’s easy to come in and say, “I’m the Digital Asset Manager. This isn’t the way that things are supposed to work, and this is what we are going to do now.”
[5:14] You can come in with that approach, but you are going get some resistance, and have trouble getting people to work with you. The best thing that you can do when getting into a new situation, is to really empower your clients, include them in the decision making.
[5:29] If your company has gotten to the point that they need this system, they’re probably already pretty successful. You need to understand that success and know the scope of the project that you’re putting in so that you can work with these people and kind of allow them to do things the way that they like to do them, but still improve processes regularly.
[5:51] When you can recognize the history behind why things are done the way they are done and let people be a part of making this new system with you, that’s really the best way to get buy‑in from you clients. I would say that’s probably my biggest success with the network I’m supporting right now is really just being able to say that it was a team effort even though I might be managing the project myself.
Henrik: [6:18] What about would you like to share to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Dan: [6:23] Whether you are a DAM professional or not, if you’re a producer, or editor, really anybody that’s looking to be in the media business, networking is probably the most important thing that you can do.
[6:34] One thing that I like to tell people is, you have all the skills in the world but they won’t get you a job. You can keep our job with one, but if you don’t have a network of people to go to, you will never get a job to apply those skills.
[6:46] The most important thing you can do these days is talk to other people that do what you. Compare notes, talk shop, go to conferences. Hopefully, you’ll be with a company that’s supportive enough to send you to them, because they can be costly if not.
[7:01] Just really see what your peers are doing. By seeing what they do, you’re going to be able to do your job better. If you’re an aspiring Digital Asset Management professional, get on LinkedIn, join discussions, ask questions. Just find other people that do what you do.
[7:15] A lot of times if you’re just approaching somebody and saying, “Hey, help me with this job,” they might not be so receptive. If you talk to people and talk to them about what they do, and why they make certain decisions, I think they’re going to be real open to discussing things with you.
[7:32] Later down the line, when you need them for that favor, you’re going to be in pretty good position because they’re going to say, “I remember this guy and he was really cool to talk to about DAM.” Or producing, or editing. Whatever it may be.
[7:44] LinkedIn is most powerful tool to anybody in my industry right now. It boggles my mind when I talk to people around the office. That are just, “I’m not on there yet,” or “I’ll get to it one of these days.”
[8:01] Don’t wait. Get on there. It can’t hurt and you are going to connect with people you worked with ten years ago, and be like “Oh, look. That person works at NBC now.” Now you have a contact with NBC. Great!
[8:12] Another thing to do, if you’re really aspiring to get into DAM, find a way to incorporate it into your personal life.
[8:20] In my case, I am a music nut. I have to have the whole discography of every artist that I love. I have 50,000 media files and they all have artwork. They all have metadata. The year that the album came out, what artist, what album. The ratings in iTunes. 3 stars, 4 stars, 5 stars.
[8:46] I can make a playlist of Rolling Stones songs from the 70s, which in my opinion are their best years. Exclude live albums, only include songs that I’ve ranked as 4 stars and 5 stars.
[8:59] Where your friend might want to make a Rolling Stones playlist, and it’ll take him three hours to go through everything, and say, “I want these songs. Maybe that one. Maybe not. I’ll come back and decide on that later.” They can work on it for three hours. At the click of a button, I have my playlist and I’m already listening to it.
[9:14] [laughs]
Dan: [9:15] Just finding any way. Be it your personal movie collection, whatever, find a way to incorporate it to your life. If you’re not already in the field, you’re going to go on interviews and explain it to people why you’re the best person for the job. If you don’t have that past experience, at least give them something that like that.
[9:33] You have Digital Asset Managers in everyday life every day, that don’t even realized that what they’re doing with iTunes is exactly what we do with these massive media corporations.
Henrik: [9:44] Great advice. Thanks.
Dan: [9:45] My pleasure.
Henrik: [9:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com.
Elizabeth Keathley discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
You recently authored a new book called Digital Asset Management: Content Architectures, Project Management, and Creating Order out of Media Chaos. Explain why you decided to write this and why people should read it.
What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Elizabeth Keathley. Elizabeth, how are you?
Elizabeth Keathley: [0:09] I’m well. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Great. Elizabeth, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Elizabeth: [0:17] Wow. [laughs] I’m involved a lot with Digital Asset Management. I’m on the board of the DAM Foundation. I’m currently head of the education committee. I’m also an author. I have a book that just came out.
[0:31] Didn’t you see that on Amazon? Gosh, I write a lot about Digital Asset Management, and I own Atlanta Metadata Authority which helps people with staffing for Digital Asset Management, and I also go in and do a lot of arrangement and description of large sets for people.
[0:47] When you work in Digital Asset Management for a while, you get to this point where you grow the skill set or you can start manipulating thousands or even tens of thousands of assets at a time instead of touching individual ones. Although, you’re still going to do that from time to time anyway.
[1:04] I help people with their metadata modeling and flip everything into CSV sheets usually and help them with their controlled vocabulary and making everything standard and maybe some digital preservation concerns and, evening out their library so they can find things basically which is really just called metadata management. Some people call it metadata cleanup. In the old days, we used to call it library cataloging. Now, we just call it Digital Asset Management work mostly, I guess.
Elizabeth: [1:45] Yes, I did and you were the technical editor on that book, Henrik.
Henrik: [1:49] I was.
Elizabeth: [1:50] Yes, I was so glad to have somebody who gets it there and make me mind my Ps and Qs as we went through. I’m really glad the book is out. If people are thinking about buying it, I highly recommend trying to get hold of the PDF copy. I think that’s the best copy because it’s in color and all the links are active.
[2:08] I’m making the audio copy. It’s an abridged audio version, free on my website. If you go to atlantametadata.com, you can get the abridged audio version and the reason it’s abridged is that the book and its other forms has all these charts and graphs and illustrations and photos, but of course in the audiobook, you don’t get those and that is also part of why I made it free, because there is a substantial amount of the content missing in the audio version, but I wanted to do an audio version anyway because I remember when I was student I wanted to read these kind of books and I didn’t have the money, so I thought, “I kind of want to learn how to do podcasting and this kind of thing anyway, so a free audiobook version of my own work is a good way to start.”
Henrik: [2:52] Can you explain why you decided to write this book, and why people should read it?
Elizabeth: [2:56] I decided to write the book because for the past couple of years, I’ve been writing some articles for the Journal of Digital Media Management and working for the DAM Foundation. I realized that I have a lot of knowledge that people were interested in, and I really like writing about Digital Asset Management. I actually enjoy that process as masochistic as that may seem.
Elizabeth: [3:16] Some people find it really painful but I kind of enjoy it, because when I sit down to write about Digital Asset Management, it makes me think about the things that I know in a different way and it forces me to express sort of the tenants of the practice of the systems that we work on in a way that I ordinarily wouldn’t do for myself. Honestly, it helps me remember things more.
[3:40] I have had the experience, and I don’t know if you’ve had this Henrik, where I would be working on a DAM and I would go back to do a task that I had done before, maybe altering a metadata model or getting beyond the code base of something. I couldn’t remember how to do it, and so I would email one of my workers and ask them, “Hey, could you just remind me how we do this?” They would forward me back the instructions I had written them a couple of years earlier on how to do that task. It’s just because if you don’t do it everyday, you forget the steps and that kind of thing.
[4:17] The book is very general. It doesn’t go with any specific systems because I think that the evolution of DAM systems is moving so fast that any book on that would be quickly dated. It’s more of a overview of what DAM systems are and how they work and how you can set one up and this sort of common issues. I want to get it all down in print form before I forget it, because we’re always learning new things and working on different things. I think it’s fun.
Henrik: [4:43] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Elizabeth: [4:48] Gosh. What are the biggest challenges and successes? I think the biggest challenges with Digital Asset Management are simply change management. In particular, I think that the way that we do hiring and promotion and human resource, in general right now, is really broken across corporate America.
[5:07] We have these human resource officers, and I tried to address this a little bit when I did the DAM Foundation Salary Survey, but I address it more in the book. We have these human resource officers and they want to put people in a category. They want to say either you’re a tech worker or you’re a marketing worker or you work in creative services or you work in print. Digital Asset Management is all of these things and more.
[5:32] We see this weird problem where people spend all these money on these solutions and they don’t necessarily get adopted across organizations because there’s this division of labor and this categorization of labor that in a lot ways is very artificial.
[5:47] The other thing that we see is that quite often, people who maybe are younger or coming at this as their first career or maybe even their third career, the job has been typed one way or the other and they can’t get there because it’s perceived to be wrong rung on the ladder, either too low or too high. That’s just ridiculous [laughs] . We can do the work and you’re good at the work. You should be allowed to have that position.
[6:11] This is something we are just going to continue to struggle with. There’s a lot of societal shifts going on with that now. I really like this Zappos model. Have you heard about this?
Henrik: [6:19] Yes.
Elizabeth: [6:20] Where there’s no hierarchy?
Henrik: [6:22] Mm‑hmm.
Elizabeth: [6:23] Can I tell you why I think it’s brilliant?
Henrik: [6:24] Please.
Elizabeth: [6:25] I think it’s brilliant because what I saw during my time in corporate America is that you have people who are maybe at the end of their career and they want to dial it back. They want to dial the responsibilities back. A lot of times, you see people saying, “Oh, they’re just sitting out their time or whatever.”
[6:41] Unfortunately, they’re sitting out their time in the management position and that can really mess everybody else up. What they should really be allowed to do is retain that seniority because they are valuable to the company for being there, but they shouldn’t be in a position of power but at the same that shouldn’t be viewed as a demotion.
[7:01] We want to keep those people in the workplace. They’re very valuable. There’s no reason they can’t continue to contribute, but why are we insisting that these people are senior management? At the same time, you might have people lower down the scale who don’t have a lot of project management skills because they’re new to the workforce or maybe because they’re younger, they’re starting a family.
[7:22] There’s all these different reasons why you might be given more responsibility, or less responsibility, but that doesn’t necessarily fit with the title of associate or newcomer or middle manager. You need to be able to take up steps up and down in responsibility in relation to what’s going on at your stage of life and not view that as having you take a hit, or for my generation of women who tend to be super educated, they shouldn’t have to drop out of the workforce at any point. They should just be able to dial it back for a little while.
[7:55] I think the Zappos model really allows for that. I think it’s going to allow for much more intergenerational harmony. Also, it’s going to compensate for the fact that we have this weird thing that’s happened for everybody who’s younger has all the educational credentials because they’ve had to get them with the baby boomers who are still in the workforce. It’s very weird right now. I think with that Zappos model is kind of brilliant. I hope it works and I hope it gets adopted, but I’m not holding my breath either. What do you think of it?
Henrik: [8:25] It’s an interesting idea of having people being able to try new things, which is a struggle younger people, who are more junior in their career. Also, more senior people, to your point, going back down to basics, which I’ve seen many people try to do towards their retirement is they want to go back down the basics and not be remembered as ‘the boss’.
Elizabeth: [8:47] If you have some 27‑year‑old who’s really got a good idea and just lighting it on fire and wants to work those 50‑hour weeks and manage a product, let him. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t harness that energy. Rather than say, “You need to slow down because you’re not going to be a manager for another 10 years and you just need to wait.”
Henrik: [9:13] That’s primarily one of the reasons why the younger generation may leave a job.
Elizabeth: [9:19] Because they’re not getting the chances that they want to take.
Henrik: [9:22] Because the growth isn’t there.
Elizabeth: [9:25] Yeah. I love the Zappos model. I hope that moves on. I guess the biggest challenges that I see in Digital Asset Management are just that human resource thing, and the biggest successes that I see, oh, my gosh, really, in the field of photography. Period. I’ve seen a lot of people that have able to start their businesses because they get Digital Asset Management in a way that no one else does.
[9:49] I saw this earlier in my life in the ’90s. There were a lot of people my age who just got the Internet early on in a way that other people didn’t and were able to make a good living out of it while being self‑employed. I see that a lot with Digital Asset Management, too, and it makes me really happy.
Henrik: [10:07] I’ve noticed that the creation of photography doesn’t pay as much as the management of photography?
Elizabeth: [10:14] Absolutely. When you have these kids now who’ve grown up with digital photography, which means they’ve always gotten instant feedback on lighting and composition, they never have a wait for a film to get developed, to learn what makes a good photograph. If they have the capacity to understand visual composition and light, they’re going to instinctively get it just by having a phone.
[10:36] The creation of great photography is less technical as it used to be. The value of that has dropped, but the management of photography, you’re right, that’s a rare skill. If you can do that, you could have your own business and you can travel the world and do what you want to do.
[10:51] I actually did a talk at Henry Stewart, New York in 2013 last year called ‘DAM in the Post‑Modern Workplace’, and I don’t remember if you saw that or not, I knew you were there.
Henrik: [11:02] I did.
Elizabeth: [11:03] I’m re‑releasing that as a video sometime in the next couple of weeks. I don’t know if anybody is going to watch it. It’s going to be weird because it’s going to be me talking over like a bunch of film clips and stuff, but I’m going to put it out there on YouTube because I really enjoyed giving that talk, and I think the people who got it got it and people who didn’t didn’t. I’m hoping it’ll get a wider audience. The people who need to pay attention to that will.
Henrik: [11:26] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Elizabeth: [11:32] Never stop reading. Read the Journal of Digital Media Management, listen to this blog, read the transcripts of your blog, which by the way, there’s a ton of quotes from your book in my book. Keep learning. It is moving so fast that if you stop for minute [laughs] or maybe not a minute, if you stop for 6 months or 12 months, you would not know what was going in Digital Asset Management.
[12:00] It’s moving so fast. If you don’t pay attention, you’re going to get left behind. The great way to make money on the Internet, of course, is to try to stay just a little bit ahead of what conventional practices are so that you know how to do the things that maybe other people don’t and then they can pay you to do them.
Henrik: [12:20] Thanks, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: [12:22] Thanks, Henrik.
Henrik: [12:23] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, just log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com
In October 2013, I gave a presentation on ‘The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management (DAM)’ during the Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City. This presentation was audio recorded so it could be shared with you. Enjoy.
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking about the people aspects of Digital Asset Management. Here is part two of the Createasphere DAM conference presentation I gave in New York in October 2013. Enjoy.
[0:20] You may need a gatekeeper. Most people don’t consider that when they get a DAM. They think that it’s just technology, it’s just software. No, that’s wrong. It’s not just software, and it’s not just technology. It involves people, process, technology and information. If you don’t have all four working together, you don’t have a working DAM.
[0:43] The other thing that I’m going to throw in there is, are we the new Mechanical Turks? How many of you are familiar with the Mechanical Turks? Not just the service that’s available today, but the chess playing tool from many years ago, where there was actually a skilled chess player underneath and nobody knew how the system worked.
[1:04] It just had a… “robot”. Not really, underneath there was a human, someone who did all the work underneath. No one realized what was under there. We may be the new Mechanical Turks. Are we? DAM is not a game, so not really. It involves more skills than just chess and it takes far more patience than chess.
[1:31] People don’t understand DAM, and it takes often a lot of explanations. Everyone who’s worked in DAM long enough understands that they have to educate a lot of people in and around and across their organization, and whoever is going to touch their DAM. Make them understand why this is important for the organization, what value it serves to them, not just to me because I don’t count. It’s what the organization needs, and they need to be able to find their assets, otherwise you’re wasting money.
[2:09] Your DAM is only as good as its metadata and how well it’s been curated, and how well it’s cataloged to find those assets over and over again. There may be less reasons. You may have heard of others why we are not the Mechanical Turks, we may find it insulting. There’s a lot to consider in DAM, way too many acronyms and terms to consider and things to think about.
[2:36] Back to the who, there’s plenty of different roles to play within organizations that are involved with Digital Asset Management, at least when you’re starting out. These are all different roles that play a part, whether it’s temporary or permanent within your organization.
[2:54] A DAM shouldn’t be really stagnant. It should evolve with your organization, and the people should evolve too. That may take significant change management amongst all of you, and your organization itself. There may be resistance because [sarcastically] people love change, right? No, they usually don’t.
[3:16] One of the phenomena I’ve seen is, people are volunteered for DAM, or on rare occasions, people volunteer themselves to do DAM. Typically, they are volunteered and typically it’s not their core competency…what they were hired for.
[3:32] A designer or marketer or photographer or PM, they didn’t really sign up when they were first hired to do that. What is their passion and why would they stay through all this pain? Anyone who’s worked through DAM knows how much pain you have to go through to make people understand and show them the value, and explain it over and over and over again, and illustrate why this is important.
[4:02] You can show them the numbers, you can illustrate why it’s important to them, how it’s important to them, how they could use it themselves and how it could make their lives easier. They have to understand it themselves, otherwise you’re not going to win and you’ll keep on explaining it over and over and over again. Then, you’ll keep burning money until that issue is resolved.
[4:24] There’s often a lot of guidance, there’s a lot of training and it’s not just training once by a vendor and then they run away, but ongoing support has to exist for a DAM. Otherwise, you will not get the adoption, the user adoption of a system. You will stand up a system and it will be what’s called a ‘shelf baby’. How many of you are familiar with what a shelf baby means?
[4:44] Yes, it’s one of those systems that you pay lots of money, you put lots of care, lots of nurturing into it and then it just sits there and nobody uses it. That’s a big waste of money, right? It’s not a ‘check box’, you want the system to be used that’s why you invested in it. You want people to be able to find their assets. That’s an investment in time.
[5:05] If you are not tagging your assets and you are accumulating more and more every day, that means you have to tag those new assets almost every day, appropriately, so you can find that content within those assets. Not just, it’s a photo! How many photos do I have? 20,000. Well, I’ll just scroll endlessly.
[5:24] [laughter]
Henrik: [5:25] Bad idea. That doesn’t scale, right? It’s not scalable. You’ll just continue scrolling endlessly. It doesn’t work. Some organizations think that works. No, it doesn’t. Those solutions often don’t scale either, so there’s a lot to do there.
[5:45] There’s also the question, do I need additional headcount? Well, it depends on the volume of assets that you have. If you have a set number of files and you upload them, and you never have more assets…
[5:58] [laughter]
Henrik: [6:00] …maybe not, but if you accumulate on regular basis a small volume that it takes N number of people to tag and this is something that you have to measure. How long does it take someone to add the appropriate metadata so you can find it again?
[6:13] Your user groups, meaning the people who are actually going to use the system. Not the business people who are just going to pay for it and say, “OK, what business value is this bringing me? Why keep paying these $100,000 bills every year”? Or the IT people say, “It’s still up, go ahead and use it. It’s still working. No one’s touching it but it’s still working.” It’s often the creatives, right?
[6:37] It’s often the creatives that are creating more and more files, but they don’t like metadata. How many creatives are in the room? OK, a few. How many of you who are creatives love spreadsheets? OK.
[6:50] [laughter] Survival.
Henrik: [6:53] Fair, fair, yes, so aside from the one…
[6:57] [laughter]
Henrik: [7:02] …yes, sometimes you have to do what’s needed, right? A lot of creatives prefer to create files for some reason, because that’s what they were hired for and that’s their passion, right? Getting creatives to actually do that tagging work is next to very rare, to put it nicely, because they don’t want to.
[7:23] They don’t want to…they’ll pretend they can’t spell, they…
[7:28] [laughter]
Henrik: [7:29] …won’t spell, they won’t use any instructions, they won’t read, they’ll pretend they can’t. I’ve seen it all, so DAM hiring is quite often the need. Your options are, learn what’s out there, there’s more and more resources now. One of the reasons I created my blog is because there wasn’t enough information in the user and administrator perspective of DAM. That’s why I started blogging, because there wasn’t enough information.
[8:00] There is more now, not enough, but there is more now. I blog on a very regular basis about what is needed by the DAM community, not just us, the users, but the vendors, and the readers are users and vendors and everyone else who kind of cares. There’s plenty out there to talk about and I’m not the only blogger, I recently did a talk with some other bloggers and there’ll be more.
[8:29] Bloggers are just one part of it. There are also websites like CMSWire, like the DAM Foundation, the DAM Coalition, a bunch of others that have information about DAM that is very useful, so read about it. Watch webinars from all the different vendors, not just your preferred one. Some of them are more useful than others, especially the ones that are less salesy.
[8:52] Network with others. In New York, we have the luxury of having the world’s largest [DAM] meetup group, which you’ll meet tonight, from 5:00 to 6:30. We have 570 members, 106 of them are coming tonight. I’m one of the co‑organizers, Michael in the back is another one. Chad, if he’s in the room is, is the founder.
[9:13] We doubled the size of our membership this year, so there’s plenty of networking available and we video record every session whenever we have a panel. So worldwide, even if you are not in New York or your schedule is busy, you have the availability to watch our videos and they’re on YouTube for free.
[9:33] Use consultants as necessary. I’m a DAM consultant, full disclosure.
[9:39] [laughter]
Henrik: [9:40] …and there is DAM hiring. There are more and more DAM jobs, there’s about a hundred almost every day available. You go on indeed.com, on monster.com, dice.com, you can find DAM jobs and you can also post DAM jobs just make sure you know what you’re looking for. When I talk to recruiters, most of the time they don’t know anything beyond a req. Fix that.
[10:03] [laughter]
Henrik: [10:04] Know what you’re looking for yourself. It takes people obviously. To do the research, to prioritize, to make the decisions, to analyze the information because the analysis isn’t done by a machine, to create processes and actually follow them, to hold those accountable, usually everybody, and to select the right system for your organization, and not to over‑complicate, but to simplify, and to do the DAM work…
[10:38] [laughter]
Henrik: [10:39] …or to fail or to succeed. It’s up to you.
Another DAM Podcast 